The hidden cost of letting AI choose your lunch (Business Insider, 6/20/2026)

[highplainsdem]

https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-reliance-decision-making-life-advice-cognitive-surrender-2026-6

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Across TikTok and Substack, users are posting about how they have become so dependent on AI that they use it to make basic and personal life decisions — what to eat, what to wear, how to phrase a message to friends, or how to navigate a toxic relationship.

What may seem like a harmless convenience is becoming increasingly common. And researchers say it could have profound consequences. The more people rely on AI to make decisions, the less practice they get making difficult decisions on their own.

Over time, that risks weakening the cognitive and social skills people develop through experience, uncertainty, and trial and error. In more extreme cases, AI researchers say it could begin shaping not just what people do, but also the beliefs they hold.

"We want to believe we're becoming more powerful thanks to our [AI] tools," Cornelia C. Walther, a Wharton senior fellow and pro-social AI researcher, said. "But in fact, we're giving away ever more power."

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Walther points out how this can become reliance and then full-blown addiction.

And the article describes a new AI app called Moot, meant to be used for decision-making, where the user's question is "debated by different AI personas that then vote on the best path forward."

This reliance on AI can affect how people think about politics, too.

[RockRaven]

1. JFC, what fucking losers.

All these damn creepy weirdos are trying to offload all of the things which make you human to AI so they can spend more doing computer stuff. They have it completely backwards.

[Wonder Why]

3. The future of humanity based on Darwin's Principles: An empty head with two thumbs attached. Our descendents.

[orthoclad]

6. No future, if we don't reverse the waste

leading to catastrophic climate change.

[SheltieLover]

2. People are asking ai what to eat?

Morons.

[mwmisses4289]

4. How appropiate an Ai app is called Moot.

Cause if you use it, you've become moot.

[orthoclad]

5. How many megaWatthours were wasted

on these trivialities?

Forget the psychology. Count the climate-change physics. This will wreck the lives of people too poor to use AI.

[ExtraGriz]

7. Laziness..

When it comes to making decision about meals, what to wear...when will they start letting Ai decides when to go to the bathroom, wipe their butts, taking a shower...it makes me ill.